Updated August 2026 · Vynus Designs Ltd, Salford, company number 15990192
A small business website in the UK costs £600 to £3,000 for most trades, shops and professional services in 2026. Bespoke builds with custom design run £3,000 to £12,000. Add £150 to £400 a year for the domain, hosting plus email. Those running costs are the part quotes usually leave out.
Most pages that answer this question quote a range then stop. The range is the easy half. What decides whether you pay £700 or £7,000 is a short list of specific choices, so this page lists them, prices each one, then shows the two year total rather than the day one figure.
Prices below include our own. We build websites in Salford for businesses across Greater Manchester, so the figures are what we actually charge rather than an industry estimate.
| Type of business | Typical build | Realistic price | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sole trader, one service, one town | 4 to 6 pages, contact form | £600 to £1,200 | 2 to 3 weeks |
| Trade with several services | 8 to 14 pages, service pages per job type | £1,000 to £2,500 | 3 to 5 weeks |
| Professional services firm | 10 to 20 pages, case studies, booking | £2,000 to £5,000 | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Shop selling online | Product pages, payments, delivery rules | £3,000 to £12,000 | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Anything with logins or a database | Custom build | £8,000 upwards | 3 months upwards |
Our own pricing sits inside the first three rows. £695 plus VAT for a single page site, £1,000 plus VAT for a standard multi page build, £2,497 plus VAT for a larger site with bespoke design work. Those are fixed prices rather than day rates.
The same eight page website has three different prices depending on who builds it. This is the single biggest variable, so it is worth understanding before comparing quotes.
| Route | Eight page site | What you get | What you carry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself on a builder | £0 to £300 a year | Templates plus hosting bundled | Every hour of the work, plus the result |
| Freelancer | £600 to £2,000 | One person, direct contact | Availability risk if they move on |
| Small studio | £1,000 to £4,000 | Design plus build plus a support route | Less flexible than a freelancer |
| Agency with a team | £4,000 to £15,000 | Strategy, copy, design, build, testing | Longer timelines, larger overhead in the price |
A £900 site from a freelancer plus a £4,500 site from an agency are frequently the same number of pages. The difference is the process around the build rather than the build itself.
Everything else is noise. These five explain almost every gap between two quotes for the same business.
This is where a £900 website becomes a £1,300 first year. None of these are optional once the site is live.
| Item | Yearly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | £10 to £20 | A .co.uk renews cheaper than a .com in most cases |
| Hosting | £60 to £300 | Shared hosting is fine for a brochure site. A shop needs more |
| SSL certificate | £0 | Free through Let’s Encrypt. Being charged for this is a flag |
| Business email | £50 to £140 | Per mailbox. Free with some hosting plans |
| Updates plus backups | £0 to £600 | £0 if you do it. Unpatched sites are how small sites get hacked |
| Premium plugins or licences | £0 to £250 | Booking systems plus form tools are the usual ones |
Year one on a £1,000 build is realistically £1,150 to £1,600. Year two onwards is £150 to £400 unless you change something. Ask any quote to state the running costs separately. A quote that does not mention them has not finished.
| Route | Build | Running, 2 years | Two year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website builder, done yourself | £0 | £340 to £600 | £340 to £600 |
| Freelancer or small studio | £1,000 | £300 to £800 | £1,300 to £1,800 |
| Agency | £5,000 | £800 to £2,000 | £5,800 to £7,000 |
The builder route is genuinely cheapest in pounds. It costs 20 to 60 hours of your own time instead. Whether that is a saving depends entirely on what an hour of your time earns.
Answer five questions about the site you need. It returns a range plus a breakdown by line item, using the same figures as this page. No sign up.
Open the cost calculator£600 to £3,000 covers most small businesses in 2026. Under £600 usually means a template with your logo dropped in. Over £5,000 for a brochure site means you are paying for an agency process rather than extra website.
A cheap site that loads fast, works on a phone plus explains what you do will outperform an expensive one that does none of those. Price is a poor predictor either way. What matters is whether it was built for how people actually find you.
Both exist. A one off fee plus small running costs means you own the site. Monthly plans of £50 to £150 spread the cost, though you frequently stop owning the site if you leave. Ask who holds the domain plus the files before signing.
Two to five weeks for most small builds, assuming the words plus images are ready. Waiting on content is the usual cause of a project running long.
Buy the domain yourself, write your own words, use real photographs of your own work, then pay a freelancer or small studio for the build. That is typically £600 to £1,200 all in. You keep control of everything.
If the supplier is VAT registered, yes, at 20%. Our prices are quoted plus VAT so the figure you see is the figure before it. Always check which way a quote is stated before comparing two.
Prices checked August 2026 against live UK quotes plus our own current rates. We review this page every quarter.
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